Taxi Driver (1976) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 31 titles created 30 Nov 2011 a list of 28 titles created 16 May 2012 a list of 28 titles created 23 Sep 2014 a list of 23 titles created 10 Jan 2016 a list of 23 titles created 8 months ago Search for " Taxi Driver " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 4 Oscars.

Another 21 wins & 15 nominations. See more awards » Videos After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant. Director: Quentin Tarantino 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.3/10 X In future Britain, Alex DeLarge, a charismatic and psycopath delinquent, who likes to practice crimes and ultra-violence with his gang, is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem - but not all goes according to plan. Director: Stanley Kubrick Henry Hill and his friends work their way up through the mob hierarchy. Director: Martin Scorsese In Miami in 1980, a determined Cuban immigrant takes over a drug cartel and succumbs to greed. Director: Brian De Palma A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where an evil and spiritual presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future.

Director: Stanley Kubrick A criminal pleads insanity after getting into trouble again and once in the mental institution rebels against the oppressive nurse and rallies up the scared patients. Director: Milos Forman A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue. Director: Stanley Kubrick During the Vietnam War, Captain Willard is sent on a dangerous mission into Cambodia to assassinate a renegade colonel who has set himself up as a god among a local tribe. Director: Francis Ford Coppola Greed, deception, money, power, and murder occur between two best friends, a mafia underboss and a casino owner, for a trophy wife over a gambling empire. Director: Martin Scorsese The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption. Director: Quentin Tarantino An emotionally self-destructive boxer's journey through life, as the violence and temper that leads him to the top in the ring destroys his life outside it.

Director: Martin Scorsese Unscrupulous boxing promoters, violent bookmakers, a Russian gangster, incompetent amateur robbers, and supposedly Jewish jewelers fight to track down a priceless stolen diamond. Director: Guy Ritchie Edit Storyline Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her. After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp and lover Matthew.

Written by Huggo Taglines: On every street in every city, there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody. See more » Genres: 8 February 1976 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Robert De Niro thought of Travis Bickle as a crab - indirect and tended to shift from side to side. See more » Goofs Easy Andy claims that the .44 Magnum revolver will "stop a car at a hundred yards, put a round right through the engine block." It actually won't penetrate an engine block at that range, and the shooter will have little hope of damaging or disabling a component of the engine that will disable the vehicle (such as shorting out the battery or causing the coolant to drain out). However, it's obviously part of his sales pitch. See more » Quotes Personnel Officer : [to the dispatcher] Harry, answer that. [to Travis] Travis Bickle : I can't sleep nights. Personnel Officer : There's porno theaters for that. Travis Bickle : Yeah, I know. I tried that. Personnel Officer : So what do you do now? Travis Bickle : Well, I ride around nights mostly... subways, buses...

I figure, you know, if I'm gonna do that I might as well get paid for it. (the Mad Hatter's tea party.) – See all my reviews A lonely Vietnam veteran who has insomnia spends his nights as a taxi driver in the dirty streets of New York, where he encounters a young prostitute who he tries to help make a difference. This is a very good film and one of Martin Scorsese best (Goodfellas being my fave). An excellent portrayal from Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle the cabbie and good performances from Jodie Foster as the child prostitute Iris Steensman, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle and Harvey Keitel as a pimp called Sport. You actually get drawn into the isolation and anger that Travis is feeling towards these lowlifes and because of that you really feel sympathy for him. Though after a while the loneliness and the city really starts to haunt Travis's mind, causing violent instincts and paranoia. This film is filled with such memorable lines e.g.Travis Bickle 'You talking to me? Well I'm the only one here.' and the many powerful scenes that stay in your head after it's finished.

The hypnotic cinematography is a standout, as if your seeing the harsh & gritty New York streets and twisted people through the eyes of Travis when he is driving his cab. A great screenplay, a stunning score by Bernard Herrmann and a superb atmosphere created. This is a brutally compelling and bleak look at a decaying and corrupt society of the 70's. An unsettling gem of a film. 5/5 166 of 215 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Taxi Driver | 2016 Tribeca Film Festival FILM GUIDE TAXI DRIVER Martin Scorsese’s powerful psychological thriller Taxi Driver will celebrate its 40th Anniversary at the 15th edition of the Festival. Starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, and Cybill Shepherd, Directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader and produced by Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips, the 1976 film was nominated for four Academy Awards®, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Robert De Niro; and two Golden Globes.

One of TIME Magazines 'all-TIME 100 Movies,' Taxi Driver was called 'a brilliant nightmare,' by the Chicago Sun-Times and praised by the Village Voice as 'a phenomenon from another day and age.' After the screening: Conversation with Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Michael Phillips, and Paul Schrader. Moderated by Kent Jones. Tickets will be available to the public beginning March 24 at 10am EST on beacontheatre.com or via Ticketmaster at 866-858-0008.

Special Note Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster set for Taxi Driver reunion | Film | The Guardian Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster set for Taxi Driver reunion The Tribeca film festival will play host to a special screening in honor of the 40th anniversary of Scorsese’s classic thriller Released in 1976, Taxi Driver – best known as the film in which De Niro utters the immortal ‘You talking to me?’ Photograph: The Ronald Grant archive Friday 18 March 2016 12.47 EDT Last modified on Friday 18 March 2016 12.50 EDT Close This article is 10 months old Taxi Driver will celebrate its 40th anniversary at the upcoming Tribeca film festival with a special screening. Director Martin Scorsese, writer Paul Schrader, as well as stars Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Cybill Shepherd are set to attend the event on 21 April, and take part in an onstage conversation following the film.

Released in 1976, Taxi Driver – best known as the film in which De Niro utters the immortal “You talking to me?” line – received four Academy Awards nominations, including best picture and best actor, and won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival. It’s since been dubbed by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best films of all time. Tribeca film festival: Tom Hanks and Michael Shannon in 2016 lineup Read more “Taxi Driver is one of the most brilliantly disturbing movies ever made, and why I chose to go into film. It’s had an indelible impact on pop culture, and its performances rank among the most memorable in cinema,” said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder, Tribeca film festival , in a statement. De Niro, a co-founder of the festival, meanwhile said it’s “great honor” to revisit the film at his event. “I’m very proud to have worked on this film with Marty, Jodie, Harvey, Cybill, Paul, Michael and Julia as well as the extraordinary cast and crew.

I remain equally proud today.” This marks Scorsese’s third film to get the anniversary treatment from Tribeca, following King of Comedy in 2013 and Goodfellas last year. The 15th edition of the Tribeca film festival will take place from 13-24 April in New York City. ‎Taxi Driver (1976) directed by Martin Scorsese • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd 7 I find it strange that this movie is so popular. I see 'bros' quoting it and they always have this next to Goodfellas and The Sopranos and Entourage in their collection of movies. I think a lot of people like it for the wrong reasons. They like the violence and the guns and DENIRO. But for me this is the quintessential art house film. It's ambiguous in it's meaning, it has no plot, it's main character has a lot of mental issues, it's meandering. And all of the characters in this movie, save for the Presidential campaign's employees are completely fucked up. But maybe I'm not giving these 'bros' enough credit.

Maybe they feel just as lonely as Travis Bickle… 17 When you hear the name Travis Bickle, you might think of the infamous quotes that have been repeated or referenced for decades. You may recall the wardrobe choices Bickle makes throughout the film as well as the iconic transformation of his hair, the image of DeNiro with a mohawk and an eerie smile across his face ingrained into your movie loving soul. Last night I sat down and experienced Taxi Driver through a fresh set of eyes, having gone far too long without a viewing, the last being as a dumb shit teenager who probably couldn't pick Martin Scorsese out of a lineup. As I dimmed the lights and got lost in this astounding masterpiece, I realized that despite his… This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth. I realize this is way too long, but I hope you read at least some of it haha. After viewing the film again, with the addition of the Martin Scorsese/Paul Schrader feature commentary, It is evidently clear (if it wasn't already) that Taxi Driver is one of the great american movies.

Very few films involve the heart and soul, both in front and behind the camera, but even fewer films reveal even more about the heart and soul with such wealth and detail. That's the kind of effect that Taxi Driver had on me, It revealed and presented humanity in a light that I have never been exposed to before. Never have I had the opportunity to delve into a… This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth. The greatest thing to ever exist. Better than sliced bread. The Bee's knees. The gold standard. Flawless. Masterful. Iconic. Taxi Driver floors me every time I watch it. Every shot is perfection, every line of dialogue is simultaneously heartbreaking and illuminating, Travis Bickle is one of the finest characters ever written and De Niro embodies him brilliantly, every note of Bernard Herrmann's score makes my heart swell; all of it soothes the soul in a very personal and profound way. A highlight, if I could ever possibly single out one moment out of countless others in Scorsese's masterpiece, is the long shot as Travis walks back to finish off Sport, all while the "manager" is bleeding profusely from his severed fingers.

The blunt audacity and the vivid nightmarish visuals bring the cathartic shootout to a level of swift messiness and symbolic horror. The greatest film ever made. Review by Maleek Scott ★★★★★ Taxi Driver, the chef-d'oeuvre of cinema. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is truly an iconic character." You talkin to me?" has had it's overuse within pop culture, but it's nothing like hearing it from Bobby D, as the character of Travis. Fed up with the underbelly of New York, we suddenly feel our protagonist's discomfort. Review by Fatima Hermosillo ★★★★★ I watched this back when I was in 7th grade when my parents were out to attend a party. I stayed home with my dog and my older brother was busy in the basement playing his video games. At first, I wanted to just stop the movie because I wanted to save this movie for when I'm mature. I didn't and I finished it the whole thing, not being able to move from my couch. The intense psychological journey of paranoia, we follow of a man named Travis Bickle and the urge for violence that grows inside of him. During this, his attempt to also save a young prostitute.

This film is my favorite film of all time and one that changed the way I feel about cinema. Review by TheObsoleteMan ★★★★★ One of the greatest of all time, and perhaps De Niro's best performance. The tension is so subtle, but it's always there, always building the crazier and more determined Travis becomes. His sanity crumbles as he watches his city crumble, yet he seems to find some sort of enjoyment in his hypocrisy. What Betsy tells him is right: he's a walking contradiction. He complains and worries for the shit that New York has become and bickers no one does anything about it, yet he drives through it and almost seems to embrace it at times. He hates the disgusting feel of it, yet he attends dirty movies and drives dirty people through it at night. He says he'll have no… Review by Dave Lens ★★★½ Truly a masterpiece of a film, even if a lot of people seem to think it's boring and overrated, and nothing much happens throughout it. But I like it for its account of the gritty bits of New York in the seventies, and how there's something visually appealing about taxis driving around at night. Robert De Niro's penultimate acting achievement!

Review by Sheldon Farough ★★★★½ Ok I'm just going to get the negative stuff out of the way up front. I don't like the plot of this movie. It's definitely a character study of Travis Bickle (and totally succeeds as a character study) but I always like some kind of arcing story I can follow. ALL THAT BEING SAID this movie is so incredibly well directed and Travis is such an incredible deep character. Even though I wouldn't call this movie fun to watch, it's just so perfectly done and is so great in it's way that I still have to give it major props. Review by Sean Summ ★★★★★ Taxi Driver is one of those special films that I love equally because it's objectively fucking amazing and because of how it hits me personally. Sure there are films I really appreciate, and films that I love for my own reasons, and Taxi Driver hits both of those marks. Absolutely stellar cinematography, montages of taxis driving through the streets of New York, backed by smooth jazz, like floating slowly into a dream, turning into a nightmare as the snares slowly build.

Travis Bickle, one of the most fascinating characters in cinema, by Robert DeNiro, in what I might go so far as to call the best performance of all time. An ex-Vietnam marine, who's lonely broken mentality and lonely search… A deepness into madness... A film which has the most strong character...who is fed up of the scums on the streets. Being Insomainic he drives taxi during nights and keeps thinking about the city mess. The direction and screenplay is super strong. Background score keeps you into the movie. Acting is the top notch and so voilence. Best film in years..! 'Taxi Driver' Reunion at Tribeca Film Festival 2016: Martin Scorsese, Jodie Foster, Robert De Niro | Hollywood Reporter Courtesy of the Tribeca Film Festival 'Taxi Driver' Cybill Shepherd and Paul Schrader will also take part in a post-screening conversation in honor of the film's 40th anniversary. "You talkin' to me?" Yes — at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival .

The fest, co-founded by Robert De Niro, announced Friday that Martin Scorsese, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd and Paul Schrader will join the actor for the 40th anniversary of Taxi Driver. The director, writer and cast of the Oscar-nominated 1976 psychological thriller will take part in a conversation after the special screening, set for April 21 at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. "It’s odd to think that four decades have passed since we shot Taxi Driver on the streets of a very different New York City," Scorsese said in a statement. "It was made in a surge of energy, starting with Paul’s one-of-a-kind script, and I was working with an extraordinary group of artistic collaborators as anyone could ever hope for — Jodie, who was 13 years old at the time, and Bob gave the picture something precious, dangerous and altogether remarkable. I’m honored to take part in the celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival." The Tribeca Film Festival is set to run April 13-24.

SparkNotes: Taxi Driver: Context Taxi Driver Table of Contents Plot Overview Director Martin Scorsese was born in New York City to Italian immigrant parents in 1942. He grew up in an observant Catholic family in Little Italy, and at a young age he wanted to be a priest. His dreams soon changed, however, and he attended New York University film school. After film school, Scorsese moved west to Hollywood. Roger Corman, a pulp movie director and producer, hired him to direct Boxcar Bertha in 1972. Scorsese's first collaboration with Robert De Niro, who plays Travis in Taxi Driver, was on Mean Streets (1974), a film about Catholic Italian-Americans in Little Italy that was rooted in Scorsese's own childhood experiences. The next film Scorsese directed was Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, for which Ellen Burstyn won a Best Actress Academy Award, the same year that Robert De Niro won Best Supporting Actor for his role in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II. These Academy Awards helped Scorsese raise the funds to make Taxi Driver in 1976.

The film received huge critical acclaim, cementing Scorsese's reputation as a major director. In addition to Taxi Driver, Scorsese has directed over twenty-five films, including the documentary Italianamerican (1974), the highly controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and, more recently, the popular Goodfellas (1990) and Gangs of New York (2002). Taxi Driver elevated Scorsese's status as a director, and it assured Paul Schrader's reputation as a major screenwriter. In the mid-1970s, Schrader was an up-and-coming screenwriter whose first screenplay, The Yakuza (1975), was considered a success even though the film had not performed well financially. Taxi Driver's success bolstered Schrader's career and ensured his place in the Hollywood community. Although some scenes in Taxi Driver were influenced by the actors, the film follows Schrader's screenplay closely, more so than Scorsese has followed his other films' screenplays.

Many of Schrader's later screenplays deal, like Taxi Driver, with one man's loneliness and alienation, including American Gigolo (1990) and the more recent Bringing Out the Dead (1999), which is in many ways an update and homage to Taxi Driver. Like Scorsese, Schrader grew up in a religious household. He did not see a film until his late teens, so his influences are more literary than cinematic. While writing Taxi Driver, he was under the spell of existentialist novels such as Albert Camus's The Stranger and earlier portraits of loneliness such as Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. Scorsese made Taxi Driver in the mid-1970s, a decade famous for its diverse and innovative films. The 1970s produced a group of directors, sometimes called the "film school brats," that included Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, and Brian de Palma. These men were young Americans who had studied European filmmakers at film school, and they were also the first generation of filmmakers to have grown up watching television.

Their movies feature close attention to technical detail, while demonstrating an encyclopedic knowledge of film and television history. At the same time, their films were not just art house pictures but huge box office successes, funded by Hollywood. The fall of the Hollywood studio system at the end of the 1950s, combined with the various political upheavals of the 1960s, including the sexual revolution, the anti-Vietnam movement, and the civil rights movement, made predicting the public's taste increasingly difficult. During the early 1970s the largest studios lost over $500 million. They knew their methods of attracting audiences, which included using big name stars, making high-budget musicals, and releasing films based on popular novels, had become outdated. Studios became open to giving money to young and unknown directors who could make more original and risky movies. Taxi Driver centers on a racist, sociopathic, and violent protagonist and features a twelve-year-old prostitute, but at the time of its release it was a popular, well-received film. The movie was critically acclaimed in the United States, received four Oscar nominations, and did even better financially in Europe.

Taxi Driver immortalizes New York City in the 1970s, a city vastly different from the New York we know today. The city's filth is exaggerated in the film partly because it is seen through Travis Bickle's skewed perspective, but during 1975, when the movie was filmed, New York was literally a filthy city. New York nearly filed for bankruptcy in 1974, so when the New York City trash collectors went on strike in the summer of 1975, causing the streets to fill with warm garbage, the city didn't have the funds to fix the problem. One of the promises Jimmy Carter made when campaigning for the presidency, which he won in 1976, was that he would make sure New York City wouldn't have to file for bankruptcy. Taxi Driver presents a true-to-life portrait of what Manhattan once was. Times Square was filled with peep shows and prostitutes, and during the summer of 1975, when the film takes place, the country was in the middle of a presidential campaign where one of the main issues was moving beyond the Vietnam War, which had officially ended only in 1973.

We can easily imagine an ex-marine in New York being disgusted by the filth, finding the politicians who are supposed to help him to be artificial, and feeling that he needs to approach the city as he would a special combat mission. More Help TAXI DRIVER Roars Back on to the Big Screen with 40th Anniversary Celebration at Tribeca 2016 | Tribeca TAXI DRIVER Roars Back on to the Big Screen with 40th Anniversary Celebration at Tribeca 2016 BY Matthew Eng Director Martin Scorsese will join stars Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, and writer Paul Schrader for a post-screening conversation. Some films leave such searing, involving, and indelible imprints on the cinematic landscape, that it's next-to-impossible to imagine the medium without its unyielding influence. The Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, announced today that Martin Scorsese’s powerful psychological thriller Taxi Driver will celebrate its 40th Anniversary on April 21 at the 15th edition of the Festival.

Starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, and Cybill Shepherd, directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and produced by Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips, the 1976 film was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Robert De Niro. Read more about the film's interesting impact—with a special emphasis on the film's iconic and psychologically-nuanced protagonist— here . Following the anniversary screening at the Beacon Theatre, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, and Paul Schrader will take part in a special conversation moderated by New York Film Festival Director of Programming Kent Jones. Tickets will be available beginning March 24th at 10am EST by visiting the Beacon Theatre's website or by calling Ticketmaster at 866-858-0008. The evening is sponsored by Infor. The Tribeca Film Festival will take place April 13th to the 24th. "It’s odd to think that four decades have passed since we shot Taxi Driver on the streets of a very different New York City.

It was made in a surge of energy, starting with Paul’s one-of-a-kind script, and I was working with an extraordinary group of artistic collaborators as anyone could ever hope for—Jodie, who was 13 years old at the time, and Bob gave the picture something precious, dangerous, and altogether remarkable. I’m honored to take part in the celebration of the film’s 40th anniversary at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival,” said Martin Scorsese. “It’s a great honor for TFF to revisit Taxi Driver. I’m very proud to have worked on this film with Marty, Jodie, Harvey, Cybill, Paul, Michael and Julia as well as the extraordinary cast and crew. I remain equally proud today," said Robert De Niro, Festival co-founder. Widely considered the crown jewel of Scorsese's prodigious career, Taxi Driver centers around the alienated and quiet loner of the title, Travis Bickle (De Niro, in one of the greatest screen performances of all time), a cabbie who works the night shift in Manhattan.

After failing to land a date with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a beautiful campaign aide for presidential candidate Palentine (Leonard Harris), an encounter with a twelve-year old prostitute, Iris (Jodie Foster), and her pimp, Sport (Harvey Keitel), convinces Travis that the world is a rotten place. And as his frustration mounts, he assembles a cache of guns and learns how to use them…with deadly accuracy. Sony Pictures digitally restored and remastered Taxi Driver to 4K from the original negative and premiered the new restoration in a limited theatrical release. Visit TribecaFilm.com/Festival for more information about Tribeca’s 2016 programs and the full line-up of films. CONNECT WITH US 'Taxi Driver' Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary | Hollywood Reporter 'Taxi Driver' Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary De Niro shows off Travis’ Mohawk, which was actually a skullcap designed by makeup artist Dick Smith.

Corbis 'Taxi Driver' Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary by Gregg Kilday April 07, 2016, 8:55am PDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter On the eve of a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, the film's stars, director and screenwriter recount the tension and tumult (trivia: Harvey Keitel’s pimp was originally written as black; producers "had to hire a gang to protect us from other gangs") that preceded a movie masterpiece. A version of this story first appeared in the April 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe . Just months after Martin Scorsese completed shooting Taxi Driver on the streets of New York in 1975, the New York Daily News ran its infamous front-page headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." The president had denied a federal bailout to New York, then on the brink of bankruptcy.

The movie captures that nadir in the city's history: As his cab glides through the rain-soaked streets, as ominous in its ruthless forward movement as the shark in Jaws, Robert De Niro's Travis Bickle, a lonely Vietnam vet, eyes the pimps and drug dealers choking the sidewalks and intones, "Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets." Those mean streets have long since been scrubbed clean, but Taxi Driver, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary with a screening reuniting the filmmakers at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 21, has lost none of its disturbing power. In Paul Schrader's screenplay, born out of his own moment of crisis, Bickle first obsesses over Cybill Shepherd's campaign worker, a cool, unobtainable beauty, and when rebuffed, tries to become an avenging angel, watching over Jodie Foster's teen prostitute. Pauline Kael called the movie "one of the few truly modern horror films." It went on to earn four Oscar nominations — for De Niro and Foster, composer Bernard Herrmann and best picture, only to lose that big prize to the more rousing, upbeat Rocky.

PAUL SCHRADER (screenwriter) I had a series of things falling apart, a breakdown of my marriage, a dispute with the AFI, I lost my reviewing job. I didn't have any money and I took to drifting, more or less living in my car, drinking a lot, fantasizing. The Pussycat Theater in L.A. would be open all night long, and I'd go there to sleep. Between the drinking and the morbid thinking and the pornography, I went to the emergency room with a bleeding ulcer. I was about 27, and when I was in the hospital, I realized I hadn't spoken to anyone in almost a month. So that's when the metaphor of the taxi cab occurred to me — this metal coffin that moves through the city with this kid trapped in it who seems to be in the middle of society but is in fact all alone. I knew if I didn't write about this character I was going to start to become him — if I hadn't already. So after I got out of the hospital, I crashed at an ex-girlfriend's place, and I just wrote continuously.

The first draft was maybe 60 pages, and I started the next draft immediately, and it took less than two weeks. I sent it to a couple of friends in L.A., but basically there was no one to show it to [until a few years later]. I was interviewing Brian De Palma, and we sort of hit it off, and I said, "You know, I wrote a script," and he said, "OK, I'll read it." MICHAEL PHILLIPS (producer) [My then-wife] Julia and I were living on Nichols Beach, and our next-door neighbors were Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt, and Brian De Palma was living with Margot at the time. Brian said to me one day, "There's this guy who has written a screenplay. It's not really for me, but I think it's your taste." It was incredibly pure, a very honest piece of work. So I went to my two partners at the time, Julia and Tony Bill, and proposed we acquire it for $1,000, and by a two-to-one vote — Tony and I voted to acquire it, and Julia voted against it — we acquired the option.

MARTIN SCORSESE (director) Brian gave me the script. I reacted very viscerally, almost mystically to it and its tone and the struggle of the character. But I was still trying to get them to take me seriously as a filmmaker. I'd done a low-budget independent film called Who's That Knocking [at My Door] and an exploitation film for Roger Corman called Boxcar Bertha. I liked Julia a lot, but she kept pushing me away, dismissive, but funny. She'd just tell me, "Come around again when you've done something more than Boxcar Bertha." PHILLIPS It took several years to get made. One day Paul suggested we see a rough cut of [Scorsese's] Mean Streets, and midway through, I really felt this is our guy. Johnny Boy [played by Robert De Niro] is our actor. So we made a proposal to Marty and Bob's agent. They both had to do it or neither. I mean it was silly, in retrospect. ROBERT DE NIRO (Travis Bickle)We all liked the script a lot and wanted to do it and were committed to it.

From left: De Niro, Foster and Scorsese on the set of Taxi Driver De Niro, as Travis Bickle, fantasizes in front of a mirror. “It was a long scene in the first cut. And everybody was saying, ‘Cut the scene. It goes on forever, Marty,’ ” Schrader recalls. “Fortunately I had the right answer: ‘Why don’t you cut it in half and use it twice?’ ” And so portions of the scene appear at two points in the film. MICHAEL CHAPMAN (cinematographer) I realized years later that it's a kind of folk tale or urban legend. It's a werewolf movie in a weird way. Even his hair changes. There are these things that are wandering around in the night that are dangerous. In this case, the werewolf saves the girl, instead of killing the girl. PHILLIPS We went about trying to shop it, and it was rejected. Then Marty went off to do Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore and Bobby went off to do Godfather [Part II] and 1900. SCORSESE I remember Robert De Niro winning that Oscar for Godfather: Part II.

That night Francis Coppola accepted for Bob, who was shooting another film, and I was there, and Francis told me, "It's going to be good for your film." PHILLIPS By then, Marty and Bob were very viable filmmakers, and we were able to set it up at Columbia Pictures on a very small, million-and-a-half-dollar budget. One of the things that pushed it over the top was that the talent hung in at bargain-basement prices. De Niro got $35,000, Marty got $65,000, producers got $45,000 and Paul got $30,000. Columbia was run by David Begelman, and he pulled the trigger. But David was nervous about it, even at a low price. SCHRADER I had written the character of the pimp [that Harvey Keitel plays] as black, and we were told by Columbia we had to change it to a white guy because the lawyers were concerned "if we do this and Travis kills all those black people at the end, then we're going to have a riot.

And we're going to be liable for this." Casting the 12-year-old Foster to play the underage Iris also raised red flags. JODIE FOSTER (Iris) I had done Alice [with Scorsese]. He called my mom about the part, and she thought he was crazy. But I went in to meet him for an interview. My mom thought, with my school uniform on, there was no way he'd think I was right for it. But he said yes, and she trusted him. PHILLIPS We had to get approval from the Los Angeles welfare board, and we were running into a roadblock, so we hired Pat Brown [former governor of California] as an attorney, and magically the problem went away. FOSTER Part of the deal was that any scenes that felt uncomfortable sexually, they would have an adult be a stand-in. So my sister Connie, who was over 18, stood in for a couple of over-the-shoulder shots. PHILLIPS At the last minute, Columbia felt they needed more star power, and that's how Cybill Shepherd came in.

CYBILL SHEPHERD (Betsy) When I got the script, my character had no lines, and I threw it across the hotel room, aiming for the garbage can. But because of Mean Streets, I trusted De Niro and Scorsese. My agent at the time, Sue Mengers, told me, "When you go in to the interview, one, don't talk, and, two, do your hair and makeup." Foster, who played the underage prostitute Iris, says, “I’m just so grateful to have been part of something that’s really an American classic, part of our golden age of cinema, which to me really is the ’70s.” A Japanese poster for the film. With filming set to begin in June 1975, De Niro had just two weeks after he completed Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900, which he'd been filming in Italy, to prepare for his new role. DE NIRO I'd met with Marty in Cannes while I was shooting 1900, and we went over the script. And I worked with some guys on a military base in Northern Italy on the accent.

Then I flew back to New York and started driving a cab and getting ready to shoot. FOSTER As a kid, I thought it would be a job like all the others, but when I got there, I realized it was creating a character from scratch, which I'd never done before. I'd just been asked to be myself. It was eye-opening for me. Robert De Niro and I had a bunch of outings, where he took me to different diners around town and walked through the script with me. After the first time, I was completely bored. Robert was pretty socially awkward then and was pretty much in character, which was his process. I think I rolled my eyes at times because he really was awkward. But in those few outings, he really helped me understand improvisation and building a character in a way that was almost nonverbal. SCHRADER During preproduction, I headed uptown, just talking to people on the street, looking for the great white pimp, and in the middle of it all I ended up at a working girl's bar and struck up this conversation with this girl [Garth Avery] who was kind of strung out and very, very thin. Very close to this character that I wrote.

I asked her to come back to the hotel — we were staying at the St. Regis because it was cheap — and told her I'd pay her, but it was not about sex. Around 7 o'clock in the morning, I slipped a note under Marty's door that said, "I'm going downstairs to have breakfast with Iris. You must join us." We watched her pour sugar on top of her jam, the way she talked, and a lot of that is in the diner scene in the movie. FOSTER She plays the girl who stands next to me in the street in the movie. I talked to her a little bit, but they were more interested in her mannerisms, how she dressed and walked. I hated my costumes, though. At the fitting, I was sniffing back tears because I had to wear those dumb shorts, platform shoes and halter tops. It was everything I hated. I was a tomboy who wore knee socks. But I got over it. SHEPHERD That Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress I wear, that was my own dress that I brought to the set. Once filming began on the streets of New York, so did problems with the studio.

SCORSESE The streets were packed with people, and the heat was quite extraordinary. At night, it was even worse. You get a sense of that in the film where the kids are playing with the fire hydrant. It was always raining, so it was always wet and the windows had gems of water gleaming out at us. CHAPMAN [The movie's style] was very much influenced in my mind, and in Marty's too, by [Jean-Luc] Godard and [his cinematographer] Raoul Coutard. Much of the way the movie looks was dictated by the fact that we didn't have a lot of time and didn't have a lot of money and therefore couldn't do traditional things. We couldn't light the streets with big lights. We had to take our level of light down to let New York light itself. Of course, that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do, and I was eager to do it in a terrified sort of way. Thank God we didn't have anymore time or money. DE NIRO I remember shooting on 59th and Ninth [Avenue], and it was very slow, working my way through the traffic.

CHAPMAN We were in a real cab, in real New York. We weren't even towing the cab behind any sort of generator truck. It was just Bobby driving the cab through the streets of New York. Marty and I would squat in the back [of the cab] with the [camera] operator shooting over Bobby's shoulder. We had a little one-ten battery pack in the trunk. We stuck the sound man in there, poor guy, and we'd just drive off into the streets. When George Memmoli, the actor who was to play a man stalking his wife who hails a ride with Travis, was injured on another movie, Scorsese agreed to play the part himself. Says Schrader, “I was afraid that Marty would see himself and would be so mortified he would cut himself out of the movie, and I liked the scene. But I was a hundred per- cent wrong. He saw it, loved it and kept every single bit of himself in.” From left: Scorsese, Schrader and Phillips during shooting of the film. SCORSESE The problem was that [scenes] didn't match when it rained.

After the first week, there was a big confrontation [with the studio] where I refused to shoot until I got the permission to get as much as I could against the window [in one of the diner scenes]. There was a constant problem staying on schedule. I think we ended up with 45 days, five or six days over. PHILLIPS We built Travis' apartment and Iris' apartment in condemned buildings. We had to hire a gang to protect us from other gangs. It was very arduous. It was a tight schedule, we were over from the beginning, and there was lot of pressure from the studio. SCORSESE Michael Phillips absorbed a great deal of that. For example, I shot De Niro in this porno theater on Eighth Avenue, and there's a reverse in which you see the pornography on the screen. I was going to put a drop of oil on the negative to obscure the image, but in order to do that I had to get the image first. They saw the film at the studio [before I could obscure the image] and up comes the pornography, and they were furious. So they yelled at Michael. No matter what I did, it irritated everyone. PHILLIPS He blew that.

He really blew it. He could have shot that without having to go through that little drama we went through. When George Memmoli, the actor who was to play a man stalking his wife who hails a ride with Travis, was injured on another movie, Scorsese agreed to play the role himself. SCORSESE De Niro told me I should do it, and everyone was against it. But I was thinking that it was a labor of love, a film that was made for us and not a popular film in the sense that we could take chances and see what happened. If worse comes to worst, we could reshoot with another actor. DE NIRO There was no one else to do it, as I remember it, and I was happy with Marty doing it. SCORSESE Bob was very instrumental because he pointed out to me that the first line of dialogue was "Turn off the meter." And I did one take, and he said to me, "When you say 'Turn off the meter,' make me turn it off. Just make me turn it off. I'm not going to turn it off until you convince me that you want me to turn off that meter." So, I learned a lot.

He sort of acted with the back of his head, but he encouraged me by not responding to me. And using that tension of the inherent violence, I was able to able to take off and riff some dialogue. SCHRADER I was afraid that Marty would see himself and would be so mortified and cut himself out of the movie, and I liked the scene. I said to Michael and Julia, "Marty is going to cast himself in this role and he's going to see it and he's not going to like it and then he's going to cut the scene out!" I was 100 percent wrong. He saw it, he loved it, and he kept every single bit of himself in. Scorsese, in the back seat of the cab that De Niro drove through the streets of New York. “I remember shooting on 59th and Ninth [Avenue], and it was very slow, working our way through the traffic,” says De Niro. De Niro’s Travis confronts Betsy (Shepherd, in a dress of her own) in the campaign office as Scorsese offers direction. When he was in character, Shepherd recalls, “De Niro was truly frightening.

And that makes acting very easy, when somebody is that good.” The movie's most famous line of dialogue — Travis' " You talkin' to me? " — wasn't in the script. SCHRADER Bob called me and said, "Well, in the script, it says that he pulls out the gun, looks at himself, talks to himself. Well, what's he saying?" I said, "He's just a kid in front of a mirror playing with his gun. Just make up stuff." I figured whatever he made up would be better than writing those kind of lines. SCORSESE It was the last week of shooting. We were in a building that was about to be torn down on Columbus Avenue and 89th Street. We were running behind schedule, and I knew Bob would have to say something to himself in the mirror, and I honestly didn't know what it would be. I just remember squeezing in this scene on that angle that you see in the film, the head-on angle. I was sitting at Bob's feet, and then he just started talking to himself. So I just kept encouraging him to do that.

DE NIRO I was having difficulty with the gun, but we got it and that was used in the scene. The mirror thing was just something that I improvised that felt right. Marty was always good and easy about trying things. SCORSESE After about an hour and a half, our assistant director was pounding on the door to say we've got to get going. I opened the door and said, "Please, just give us another 15, 20 minutes. We've got something really good here." When the film was completed and shown to the executives at Columbia, further problems developed. SCORSESE We had one screening at the studio in a small screening room for some friends, and then it was shown to the studio. I don't recall what my friends said, but people were kind of perplexed. I believe it was the next day that the studio saw it and there was a smiling kind of reaction that was very brief. Then I heard word that they were concerned that women wouldn't like the film. Then, what had happened was that the film was shown to the MPAA and it was given an X rating. There was no way the studio was going to release an X, understandably.

I had the same problems with Mean Streets. I'm used to it. We were told we were going into a meeting and the studio was going to discuss with us how to proceed. We sat down, took out a pen, and the studio exec turned to us and said, "Cut it for an R or we cut it." Then we were dismissed. PHILLIPS I ended up showing it many times to the MPAA ratings board with moderate, minuscule changes. You become inured, so you see the same scene and the same blood and "Oh yeah, it's a lot better now." Ultimately Marty desaturated the red, and that made a big difference. And I don't know if it was a good thing or not, but I kind of like it. I like it that way. SCORSESE I was furious. I was complaining about it and telling all my friends and colleagues. At that time I was talking a lot to Eric Pleskow and Mike Medavoy, over at United Artists, and I remember being at the MGM commissary, complaining, and they said, "Tell you what. We'll take the picture sight unseen with an X." So I called my producers and said UA would do that.

But they were unsure of the legal problems, though crazier things have happened. So it may have been a matter of a few weeks, but I trimmed some of the blood scenes. And I was obsessed with this idea of desaturation that [cinematographer] Oswald Morris used in John Huston's Moby Dick and I always wanted to do it. So I asked, "What if we drained some of the color out and replicated the process of Moby Dick?" That was accepted by the studio, and so the entire shootout at the end goes to a grainier look. And I just finally felt good about the picture. In fact, the opening Colombia Pictures logo is the same. It's very grainy. I can't tell you how many times when they've done LaserDiscs and then DVDs, they would say, "Now you can use the original Columbia logo without the grain," and I would say, "No the grain's supposed to be there! Leave it be!" PHILLIPS There wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. The studio decided to release it in two theaters in February [1976] and hope it did a little business.

As a guide for cinematographer Michael Chapman, Scorsese drew a series of sketches (above) that mapped out the entire film, including the climactic shootout (below). SCHRADER Columbia had an investment in young talent more than they had in the film, so they were not going to do anything that would create enemies — bur they did not think it was going to be successful. Michael and Julia had a dinner at the Sherry [Netherland Hotel] in New York for Bob, Marty and I the night before it opened and basically Michael said, "I think we made a really terrific film and no one knows what will happen tomorrow.

But whatever happens let's not start blaming each other, but accept the fact that we made this film and it didn't work financially." I had been in a car with Charlie Powell, who was the head of publicity for Columbia, like a week before, and I'd said to him, "I think this film is going to do well, I'm starting to get that vibe." And he said "No, the film's not going to do well." And I said "I'll make you a bet." And he said "OK" and I said "I'll bet you 20 bucks." In those days, they could break down opening day and opening weekend by the amount of advertising they put in. I was told that they had paid for a $40,000 weekend and they got a $65,000 one. As soon as that happened, everything changed. And Charlie paid up. Opening in New York on Feb. 8, 1976, Taxi Driver was an immediate critical and commercial hit, grossing $28.8 million domestically ($117.9 million today). It was then invited to the Cannes Film Festival. FOSTER I was in the middle of shooting Freaky Friday.

Columbia didn't want to pay for me to go to Cannes, but my mom said, "Look, this is an amazing opportunity. She speaks French. We'll pay for it ourselves." Then the whole issue about violence in the movie kind of exploded. Marty, Bobby and Harvey kind of got stuck at the Hotel du Cap and didn't come out very much. But I ended up working the whole time, and the studio was very nice and said, "OK, we'll pay for your flight." SCORSESE One of the trade papers ran a story that Tennessee Williams, who was head of the jury, hated the film, so we went home. Before we went home, though, we were given a dinner by Costa-Gavras and Sergio Leone, who were on the jury, and they really liked the film a great deal. PHILLIPS I stayed behind, so when we won, I accepted the award — half the audience was on its feet cheering and the other half was booing.

SCORSESE I got a call from [publicist] Marion Billings around 5 in the morning saying, "You've won the Palme d'Or." We thought we might get screenplay or best actor for De Niro, so it was very surprising. Main Image: De Niro shows off Travis’ Mohawk, which was actually a skullcap designed by makeup artist Dick Smith. Corbis ‘Taxi Driver’ Gets 40th Anniversary Tribeca Panel With Scorsese & Cast | Deadline Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Film Festival is reuniting Director Martin Scorsese with the stars and screenwriter of Taxi Driver for the seminal 1976 film’s 40th anniversary, the festival has announced. The film will screen April 21 at the Beacon Theatre during the 15th annual Tribeca Film Festival, followed by a panel discussion moderated by Kent Jones and featuring Scorsese, Robert De Niro , Jodie Foster, and Cybill Shepherd, along with screenwriter Paul Schrader. Tickets will be available beginning March 24 at 10 AM EST at the theater’s official site, or through Ticketmaster.

'The Comedian' Exclusive Clip: Robert De Niro Meets The Parent - Harvey Keitel Hailed as one of the greatest films of all time, Taxi Driver received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Robert De Niro, and two Golden Globes. It received a 4K digital remaster and restoration by Sony in 2011, subsequently shown in a limited theatrical release, and is currently available on Blu-ray and digital from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film stars Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, Albert Brooks, Leonard Harris, Peter Boyle, and Cybill Shepherd, and was produced by Michael Phillips and Julia Phillips. The 2016 Tribeca Film Festival runs April 13-24.

Question: Who directed Robert De Niro in the film "Taxi Driver"?
Answer: Martin Scorsese